


We Can Make This Hole a Home

by GingerAle3



Series: TMA Hurt/Comfort Week [7]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (in the form of The Lonely), (kinda), Character Study, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Self-Hatred, Toxic Masculinity, discussion of both of martin's parents, do u ever think about martin kartin blackwoods life and cry, parental abandonment, the concept of home, this time the projection roulette landed on martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26198242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerAle3/pseuds/GingerAle3
Summary: Martin has always had a complicated relationship with the word 'home', but then Martin's always had a complicated relationship with a lot of things.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: TMA Hurt/Comfort Week [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893973
Comments: 4
Kudos: 73





	We Can Make This Hole a Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the TMA Hurt/Comfort Week on tumblr (themagnuswriters)
> 
> 30/8 - Sunday  
> Home
> 
> Guys. Guys I made it. I made it all the way to the end! Woo! Kinda threw myself into the deep end of writing for this fandom, but I'm so glad I did it! Thanks to everyone who left comments or kudos on any of my fics, it really kept me going :)
> 
> Anyway, I just want good things for Martin King Blackwood, and if Jonny won't do it then I'll do it myself

For Martin, the word ‘home’ had never held all that much meaning. When he was very young, it rarely crossed his mind, but when it did it carried with it the image of his parents. The house where they lived together, the narrow street it was located on, the somewhat cramped room he slept in, these were all secondary. The most important thing when he thought of his home was the people who loved him.

Then his dad left.

Martin hadn’t understood why when he was younger. As he grew older, he would come to understand that logically, it was because his mum was getting sicker and his dad wasn’t willing to take care of her as well as a growing boy, but even when he understood this he could never quite shake his initial conclusion. As a boy, curled up and crying in his room and unable to understand why he would leave when they needed him most, he’d come to the only conclusion he could think of. His dad had left because he was a bad son. He wasn’t much like the other boys in his school, preferring things like poetry and reading to football or scrapping in the playground, and they’d made it obvious that that was the Wrong Way to be a boy. His dad must have realised the same thing and left because of it.

Well, his dad might have left, but he wasn’t going anywhere. The first time he’d told his mum that, she’d seemed grateful, but as time went on he’d seen how the way that she looked at him changed. How each time he said it, she seemed more distant and uncaring to the notion, sometimes even actively hostile. Back then he hadn’t understood (or maybe he had but he’d just chosen not to). He’d written it off as just her sickness upsetting her, or later on as her age getting the better of her a little. He just couldn’t accept that she hated him, after all he’d done, all he’d given up and sacrificed to keep them together and safe and happy, all he’d done to hold together those last scraps of their home, he just couldn’t understand why she would be so hostile in return. No, it had to be something else. It had to be.

Being transferred to the Archives was a surprise to say the least, though he wasn’t complaining. He’d finally, reluctantly given in to his mother’s wishes and had her put in a care home recently, and he’d desperately been searching for something to take his mind off of it. A new position at work might be just the change he needed. Would’ve been nice if he’d at least made it through his first day without upsetting his incredibly attractive new boss though. His incredibly attractive new boss who repeatedly made it clear that he would prefer Martin to be assigned just about anywhere else. Still, Tim and Sasha were nice. It was clear they had more history both with each other and Jon than he did, so he always felt a little like he was on the outside looking in, but it was fine. He was used to that after all. It took less than a week for the archives to start feeling more like home to him than the newly too-empty flat he went back to every night.

Eventually, the archives had become home to him in a far more literal sense. If he’d thought he’d felt isolated and uncomfortable in his flat before, it was nothing compared to being stuck there for close to two weeks with a crazy worm infested lady hammering on the door and her pets trying to squeeze through every crack and gap. His sprint to the archives had been frantic, but the sense of relief had been palpable as he’d burst back through the doors. At the time, he hadn’t known about the supernatural protection the place offered, but something about it still felt inexplicably safe.

Seeing Jon again definitely helped. Jon always had a plan, always seemed in control. He would know what to do. Surprisingly, Jon even believed his story. Martin was very carefully not thinking about how gentle his voice and face had gone at that point. The cot in the archives wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing in the world, and Martin was definitely missing some of the sparse comforts of his home (like privacy for instance), but it was far better than going out and facing the worms.

Then of course, the worms broke in, and it was far harder to think of the Institute as anything close to resembling ‘home’ at that point. Difficult to think of a place as comforting or familiar when you can still remember what it looked like flooded with flesh-eating worms. He couldn’t even relax into the comforting familiarity of the people around him. None of them were quite acting normal, Jon was flighty and distrustful of anyone who could viably fire a gun, Tim was increasingly short-tempered and snappy, and Sasha was just...off, somehow. At the time he couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but somehow the worst part about finding out what had happened to her was how unsurprised he was.

It had only got worse though. In one day, he and Tim had been thrown into Michael’s hallways, some sort of twisted, long-limbed creature had tried to hunt down Jon, Sasha had disappeared, and (though he certainly didn’t believe this last one) Jon was also supposed to have murdered an old man with a lead pipe. Then the police had questioned them all in a way that he absolutely did not appreciate, and it reached the point where, for the first time in his recent memory, he was actually happy to see his little flat. It still didn’t feel safe, but it did feel...seperated somehow. Comfortably distant from the disaster zone his workplace had turned into. As he’d collapsed into bed that night, his last thoughts were dedicated to wondering where Jon was, and quietly hoping he was safe.

The next time he really heard from Jon was two months later. There had been no warning, no call ahead or mention that he’d be making his grand reappearance, he just came crashing through the door, flanked by the police officer who had interviewed Martin on one side, and the one Tim had tried to convince them that he was seeing in secret on the other. His hand and neck were wrapped in bandages, his hair was untied and completely out of control and all of them had faces like thunder, but Jon seemed to carefully keep his voice calm and level, asking where Elias was. And the head of the Institute, had sat in front of them and calmly admitted on tape that he had murdered at least two people, knowingly and in cold blood, completely confident with the fact that he would face no negative repercussions for it. Nothing to wipe away any remaining positive feelings for a job like finding out exactly what type of person you’re working for.

Jon was the closest thing he had to a sense of security during that time. True, he wasn’t there often, but even when he was gone, Martin knew he was out there somewhere, and that he’d be back eventually. Hearing that he’d been kidnapped wasn’t exactly conventionally reassuring, but in a very, very strange way it almost helped. Afer all, if Jon could survive being kidnapped by evil clowns who wanted to skin him alive followed by a murder attempt by ‘the throat of delusion incarnate’, it was easy to write him off as untouchable, or at least incredibly lucky.

As it turns out, he was neither.

For the next couple of months, Martin’s new home was the uncomfortable plastic chair next to Jon’s hospital bed. He would speak to him, tell him what was happening, chat away and fill the silence and try to pretend everything was okay. Slowly it devolved into crying, begging Jon to wake up, all the fear and pain tumbling out of him at once. He’d never felt more alone in his life. Not until he’d made his deal with Peter.

After that, Martin didn’t think about home much. He didn’t think about anything much, other than The Extinction, or what the hell Peter’s endgame was, or on occasion how much white had crept into his hair. It changed a little when Jon woke up, but definitely not as much as he knew it would have once. Instead, it just added “keeping Jon safe” to his list of priorities. It wasn’t a fierce protectiveness like when he’d chased after the Not-Sasha into the tunnels, or a worried one like when Jon had ‘stabbed himself with a bread knife’. It was simply something he knew, deep down, that he had to do. More of an impulse than anything, a single familiar instinct in the middle of his descent into The Lonely.

Until The Lonely swallowed him entirely, and even that small comfort was ripped away from him. He felt absolutely nothing, just emptiness and quiet. In a way it was a relief. After a lifetime of longing for things he couldn’t have, of never feeling like he fit anywhere, that fog-covered shore had felt right in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Like he was meant to be there. By then, the isolation felt more familiar than anything else in his life.

Except for Jon, apparently. When he’d finally seen Jon, really seen him, it felt like a thousand emotions flooded back to him at once, love and fear and grief and hope, and he was overwhelmed and crying and being held. Jon had led him out of that place both physically and mentally, living proof that in spite of everything he’d ever been told, there really was someone who cared about him, who wanted him around, who would come back for him instead of always leaving him behind. So Martin followed him, and basked in the familiarity of doing so.

Jon led them up to Scotland, to a small cottage a few miles walk from the nearest town, with a slightly dusty double bed and a perfectly serviceable couch that neither of them would even consider letting the other sleep on. The place was small, just one bedroom and a small bathroom branching off from a main room with a small kitchen tucked around a corner. There was no phone signal, but there was a fireplace and a kettle, and enough food that they could eat for the night (though not so much that they didn’t go shopping the next day). It was warm, and comfortable, and far from the sea, and surrounded by fields of incredibly good cows (Martin still couldn’t quite believe how big they were up close). As the days passed, it became familiar, almost painfully so. The way the bedroom door always creaked just a little too loud, the creaky floorboard in front of the sofa, the makeshift washing line they put together with a length of rope he’d found. It crept into Martin slowly, filling him gradually with warmth and an unfamiliar sort of love, one he couldn’t put a name to for several weeks.

They were in town, and when they had finished their shopping, Jon had reached out a hand to him with a warm smile he was still getting used to, and simply said “Let’s go home.” Yes, that was it, wasn’t it? Home. Reaching out, he laced his fingers with Jon’s and they started walking. He was Martin K. Blackwood, he was in love, and he was going home.

**Author's Note:**

> And then the apocalypse never happened, Melanie and Georgie killed Jonahlias in a completely unrelated event and Martin and Jon lived happily ever after in Scotland <3


End file.
